Kinda curious what games people have been playing recently. For those of you who still play video games, I'd find it hard to believe if you haven't found something to play, as there's no shortage of quality games out right now. Here are my thoughts on a few of the games I've played over the past few months:

Witcher 3: I recently upgraded my GPU and the first thing I wanted to do was play through the Witcher 3 again in all of its glory. It took me six weeks and 159 hours to do a full New Game+ playthrough (including both expansions). This is still one of the best games I've ever played and both expansions just solidified my opinion on it -- Blood and Wine especially. The size of Blood and Wine (geographically, story, quests, new mechanics, other content) is crazy when the entirety of most other AAA games are smaller than one of the Witcher 3's DLCs. Looking at it from a financial point-of-view, The Witcher 3's season pass is $30 for about 50 hours of additional game. Deus Ex Mankind Divided was on sale recently, and I looked up its season pass (also $30) and found out that it includes 2 new side quests and some in-game currency. $30 -- half the price of a game -- for what probably amounts to 5% of what you get in Blood and Wine. I was triggered. I need other developers to get on CD Projekt Red's level. 5/5 baby.

Abzu: After spending six weeks in the Witcher 3's world, I was ready for something short and sweet, and boy was this game short. If you don't know what this game is, it's like Journey except underwater. If you don't know what Journey is, then you suck. The game is visually perfect, but it was hard to see past the fact that it's a 2 hour game with no replay value -- especially because I just finished a game with one of the best price-to-content ratios in existence. It's a $20 game and I'm glad I paid nothing close to that. Barely a 3/5.

Doom: I've been wanting to get this game for some time now since it has gotten so much praise. When the game was first revealed, I was concerned about two things: the glory kills pausing gameplay and the generic scifi facility environments. From having now finished the game, I can say that glory kills don't "pause" combat like I expected them to. Rather, it's more akin to taking a breath in-between the fast-paced high-energy gameplay. My concerns about the environments, however, were mostly found to be true. There's a few Hell missions which are a nice visual-change, but most of the missions take place in generic grey and brown scifi facility environments that I've seen in a hundred other games. It gets pretty bad when you go through the same environment in two different missions. Other than that: the music is great, the arcade mode is a novelty, the multiplayer is horse trash. 3.5/5. Definitely deserves a sequel though.

Rocket League: This is still the only multiplayer game I play because it's one of the few examples of a competitive game that doesn't frustrate me or provoke my inner crybaby. It's better than it's ever been, as Psyonix has done a great job supporting it, and although Rocket League is one of those games with lootboxes in it, they are purely cosmetic items which can be easily ignored and not something deeply ingrained into the progression system like in certain other games. Still a 5/5.

Halo SPV3: I haven't finished this yet because it's not fucking incredible by any means, but it's great for what it is and deserves a lot of praise and respect for being a quality mod released over 14 years after Halo PC came out. The mod team greatly expanded on some of the missions (like doubling the length of Assault on the Control Room) which is pretty cool, but a 2.5 hour mission can really start to drag. I can't be too critical of it considering it was made from a place of pure love and dedication (and costs $0). If you have Halo PC, maybe check it out.

Been eyeing GPU's (have been using a friend's 970), but haven't pulled the trigger yet. When I have been on PC, it's mostly been Overwatch with a smattering of PUBG. Bought Deus Ex: HR and Portal 2 on sale even though I played some or all of both on console a few years back.

Bought a Switch recently and it's been so. fucking. clutch, especially for travels and jury duty. Played Mario Odyssey first, now I'm tackling Breath of the Wild. Skyrim is on deck for my Christmas travels.

PS4 has mostly been a Netflix machine of late, but I do have Abzu on there, as well as the Uncharted expansion. Will likely pick up the Destiny 2 Osiris expansion because I loved that dude's grimoire/lore in the first game, but god damn if I don't find the current PvP meta utterly disappointing, so I haven't played that much after our initial forays.

Since I took the past two weeks off from work, I've mostly been playing games that scratch my competitive itch, spread mostly across PS4 and PC:

PUBG - Love this game, and some of the changes that are coming with the 1.0 patch look to make it even better. Vaulting will be huge, and the new map is sorely needed. Getting a solo win in this game is so incredibly satisfying.

Overwatch - Installed this for the third time, played for ten minutes, and uninstalled it. Just don't have fun with this game.

Heroes of the Storm - Installed this for the second time, played it for a few days, and uninstalled. Something about competitive Blizzard games find new and exciting ways to make me angry. As a solo player, it seems the game forces me to win/lose at a 50/50 clip. I'll get matched up with a team that has a semblance of knowledge of the game for a game or two, followed up by guys spinning in circles, not playing, or kill chasing. After an extremely painful drubbing, I uninstalled this again. I had fun playing with Tychus and Nazeebo, so that's a plus. I do enjoy the gameplay, so I'll likely install this again at some point.

Horizon Zero Dawn - Bought this during the PSN Black Friday sale since so many people were praising the hell out of it. It's not bad. I typically expect the worst with games that have as much hype as this has had. Graphically (sans characters faces) the game looks beautiful, and the music is really good. The story is engaging, but at thus far it feels a little run of the mill. Combat is fine, though the human enemies are a little too easy to take out. The gathering/crafting aspects are weak. Pressing Triangle a bunch while you're running around isn't very compelling. With all that said, there hasn't been a 'wow' moment for me just yet. I suppose I may still be fairly early in the game (just hit level 11 or 12 I think), so there is plenty of time for that to happen.

Paladins - When this launched, I wrote it off as an Overwatch clone and laughed it off. There are characters that are near copy pasta from Overwatch in this game, and the game modes are as well (mostly). But, I was looking for something competitive to play on the PS4 and with this being a free to play game the price was right. After giving it a shot, I must say, this game is ten times more enjoyable to play than Overwatch. Unlike Overwatch, which allows players to switch characters at will during the course of a match, Paladins locks players to their character at the start. This eliminates people yelling at teammates to switch characters, and doesn't get you banned from the game for playing a character you enjoy playing as (Overwatch started banning people for 'one tricking' which is ridiculous). If you have a bad team comp, you can set your expectations for the game right at the beginning, but the game is malleable enough that I can make plays that can make up for a bad comp (as long as the team plays the objective). The F2P elements aren't too bad, as I've been able to unlock enough characters to allow me to play ranked in a few days. I could go on about it, but I don't want to write up a novel here. It's a fun game, and it's free. Give it a shot.

Been eyeing GPU's (have been using a friend's 970), but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

There's never a "good time" to buy a GPU because the next best thing is always on the horizon. I always see people saying to wait for the next generation of GPUs, but when those launch, they're hard to get and overpriced (Founder's Editions). By the time the "normal editions" reach a decent price, they announce the next generation GPUs, and the cycle continues. All of this has been exacerbated thanks to bitcoin miners driving up the prices. I bought a 1070 for $400 to replace my 760 and I'm not sure that was a good deal, but I had been wanting to bite for a while.

There's never a "good time" to buy a GPU because the next best thing is always on the horizon. I always see people saying to wait for the next generation of GPUs, but when those launch, they're hard to get and overpriced (Founder's Editions). By the time the "normal editions" reach a decent price, they announce the next generation GPUs, and the cycle continues. All of this has been exacerbated thanks to bitcoin miners driving up the prices. I bought a 1070 for $400 to replace my 760 and I'm not sure that was a good deal, but I had been wanting to bite for a while.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah, the gameplay itself is very fun. The progression system can just go fuck its own asshole with a razor dick.